


House of Jinn

by NicoNarratives



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Djinni & Genies, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-19
Updated: 2013-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-05 03:25:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1089037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NicoNarratives/pseuds/NicoNarratives
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hari becomes trapped in a cave and is sure to die, when he finds a jinn offering one wish. If only Hari would accept it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	House of Jinn

Hari opened bleary eyes to a jagged circle of desert sky. He hadn't seen the hole at all until he'd fallen through, and even now it looked only like a small patch of blue clothe tacked to the cave's sloped ceiling.  
He ached and could already feel the bruises forming all along his left, but Hari stood anyway. For a moment he swayed, anxiety crawling in his stomach. The hole was high up, and the walls of the cave arched to meet it. It'd be impossible to climb. A white beam of light cut the cavern in two, dust motes drifting through like moths. The floor here was even and the walls worn smooth, as if carved by human hands. Or some other creature, Hari thought and remembered a phrase he'd heard in his youth; House of Jinn. But it was only a phrase, and Hari didn't have the time to be playing at idle fancies. If he didn't find another exit, he'd die of thirst.

The first cavern he entered smelled old and sour. Hari inched deeper, but soon decided the darkness was too absolute to hold any hope of an exit. Hand on the wall, he made his way backwards.

His foot hit something.

Hari picked it up. It felt like rock, cold and dry, though not at all heavy. He held it to the light and twisted it, until he realized what it was. Then he dropped it with a shout. The human bone cracked against the ground and split, more brittle than burnt wood. Sudden panic clawed at Hari's throat, and he started to scream.

"Help! I'm down here! Help me!!" he shouted at the patch of light above. He stood in the rays of sun, blinding himself. He held up his hands, turning the deep brown of his skin to hot red clay. "Please!" He threw himself at the walls and tried to climb to no avail.

Hari crumpled against the wall and listened for any sound. No voices greeted him. Even the desert wind gave no call. Only silence met his ears, more stale than the air in a tomb. Hari closed his eyes, panic subsiding. He'd never had time to himself before, no silence like this. A cold serenity touched his mind. At least he'd have quiet at the end of his life.

The cavern echoed his breathe.

Drip.

Hari's eyes flew open.

Again he heard it. A drip. At the other end of the cavern was a small opening, large enough only for two abreast. The tunnel behind it sloped downward, darker than the main cavern. But not entirely black. Shifting light, like moonlight off water, touched the walls. Hari descended, heart thumping in his ears and tongue thick.

A small cavern opened before Hari. Pale light illuminated a pool of water so clear that, for a moment, Hari thought it an empty hole. Hari sunk his hands into the water, cold immediately numbing his skin, and tasted it. It hurt his teeth, but was sweet and clean, and Hari drank until satisfied.

When he finished, he leaned back on his feet. He looked up to find, disappointment settling heavy in his chest, the hole lighting this cave even higher and smaller than the one in the main cavern, the walls just as unscalable. Hari dropped his gaze.

At the bottom of the pool, directly beneath the arc of light, lay a pot. It was old fashioned, with clasps on the side and an intact lid. The entirety of it shone gold.

Hoping to use it to carry water, Hari plunged his arm into the pool and gripped the pot. But it was heavy, made of metal and as full of water as it was. Hari reached with both arms, at the cost of soaking his entire front, and pulled. It finally rose, but when it came free of the pool, felt only heavier. Deciding to save his strength and pour out some to lighten it, Hari unclasped the lid.

At first Hari saw only dark, dirty water. Before he had time to wonder at it, the water twitched and rose into the air. It overflowed like smoke onto the ground, twisting and growing. Hari jumped back, but it swam over his feet, thick and heavy and blacker than any smoke Hari had ever seen. The air filled with the spicy scent of clove and dates. Smoke flickered like storm clouds, like fire, and rolled upon itself. It congealed and seemed to flatten and then-

A man, blacker than night, kneeled before Hari.

Hari dropped the lid.

The jinn caught it with one deft, square palmed hand and looked up, eyebrow quirked. "Be careful, master. This pot is soft gold and worth more unscathed."

Hari said nothing, panic rendering him mute. The jinn only watched him, eyes burning like embers. Hari had been raised with stories. He knew what dangerous ground he stood on.

He knew a jinn could save him...and make him regret it.

"P-pardon me, Master Jinn," Hari stuttered, remembering himself. Being polite never hurt.

Full lips quirked at the corners and Hari held his breath. "You released me from my prison," the jinn said. "You have my utmost gratitude. For that, I will give you anything you should want. What is your name?"

Hari only briefly debated if he should say. "Hari," he answered and bowed his head. "And may I ask yours?"

The jinn hissed something like water falling on hot stones. Hari flinched, and the Jinn laughed. "Or, in your tongue, I am Moonlit. You are a polite human, I do like that. May I stand?"

Hari bounced back. "Yes! Of course!"

Moonlit rose. Hari saw he was shirtless and his chest so smooth and dark he could have been carved from black marble. His shoulders were wide and round, his stomach lean, and Hari balked at how human he looked. How perfectly formed. Hari tore his eyes away, embarrassed. At least the jinn wore a long cloth about his hips, something he'd seen on elderly eastern immigrants before.

"Well, Master Hari, you have only to make a command, and I will fulfill it," the jinn said, voice smooth as fine tobacco, and Hari's face warmed at the imagined heat in the words. Focus, he told himself.

Hari had heard stories like this.

"What are..." Hari said carefully, "What are the stipulations? The rules?"

Moonlit smiled and crowded Hari then. Hari made a sound but froze when he felt lips at his ear, "Polite and clever. Very good." Then Moonlit took a step away. Seeming to examine the cavern, much smaller now for the two of them, he said, "You have one wish. You cannot ask for more wishes, no," he flashed a white toothed smile at Hari. "Nor can you ask to enslave me," he added, smile gone and shoulders hunched. He shrugged it off as he continued, "Until your wish is fulfilled, I have no access to my powers. Until your wish, I cannot part from you. I am not truly free until I grant you one request. I can give you love, money, an entrance to royalty. I could kill your enemies."

Hari shrunk back as the jinn approached him, eyes aflame and voice hissing and crackling. The smell of him was thick, sweet, and inescapable as he caged Hari with his body. "If you wished it, I could end the world."

Hari shook his head side to side quickly.

Moonlit smiled brightly, expression so playful so suddenly that it surprised a warble from Hari's throat. "Excellent, Master Hari, I would not grant that wish. I can deny any wish I wish. But there is only one wish you have, isn't there?" Moonlit looked up, revealing a long, smooth neck. "You desire escape. I know this place. They called it a tomb when I was last here."

Hari looked up at the light, heart lifting.

"So make the wish, Master Hari," Moonlit touched Hari's chin to direct his gaze. "And we will both be free."

They met and held the gaze. Hari did not answer, eyes wide and hollow. Hari knew what Jinn were. Hari knew what Jinn did when free. They burned down towns for jest, created sand storms in rage, killed hundreds in battles with one another. They were not evil, Hari knew, no more than people. But they cared for humans the same a human cared for the ants in their path. His own mother's home had been destroyed as a child by a jinn. She told him sometimes of the booming laugh she'd heard in the night sky as she stood outside the rubble. The embers in Moonlit's eyes banked as the moments crept by.

"Why were you sealed?" Hari asked, and Moonlit dropped his hand away.

"Is it your wish to know?"

"No."

"Then I won't to tell you," Moonlit said. "Make your wish. If you want to live, make your wish."

Hari only looked away.

"Are you mad?" the Jinn asked, ducking his head into Hari's line of sight. "Wish to save yourself!"

"I can't," Hari slid to his knees. "I can't when I know what you would do when free."

"You mistake me for my brothers. I have no quarrel with man."

"I suppose I could wish you unable to ever harm a human," Hari said, face in his palms. He felt hands on his shoulders and yelped as he was hauled into the air.

"I refuse that wish. Wish to escape, fool." Moonlit walked from the cavern and up the sloping tunnel.

"What are you doing?" Hari squawked, pressed hard against another man's chest. Moonlit burned hot through his clothing, and Hari tried not to touch his skin.

"Showing you the sunlight," Moonlit said with a warm puff of exasperated air against Hari's ear.

Hari grit his teeth and fought his way out of Moonlit's grip. He succeeded and fell on the stones, jarring his already bruised body.

"If you won't promise to not harm a human, how can I trust you?!"

"Because I will defend myself," Moonlit said calmly, gaze to the sun. He moved into the ray of light and Hari saw his skin shift like smoke beneath it. Like his body was only a bottle and him the smoke trapped inside. "Old friend," he whispered so softly that for several moments Hari did not understand.

"Why would you fear a human? We can't hurt you."

Moonlit's head snapped to the rumpled heap that was Hari. "It was a human who bound me. I will not allow myself to be captured again. Even if I need to wait for you to die and another hundred years to pass til I'm found again," he hissed, eyes flaring.

Hari said nothing. He only settled against the wall, mind made.

Moonlit watched him for a while before crossing his arms and sighing. "Don't be foolish, human. I do not want to watch you die here," he said. Hari didn't reply and Moonlit threw his hands into the air and began to pace the cavern. "You'll die before the night passes," he said, turning on his heel when he reached the end of the cavern. "The cold will kill you."

"At least I won't starve," Hari finally answered.

Time passed in silence; the jinn pacing and Hari with his eyes closed, praying. He felt serene, accepting. He would die, but no one else would suffer a jinn.

He jumped when he heard a voice by his head. "I hate to watch a human die."

Hari cracked open one eye and said to Moonlit, who crouched over him, "Then look away." Moonlit leaned closer, and Hari wondered if jinn had no sense of personal space.

"We jinn can die, you know," Moonlit said. He reached out and touched the bend in Hari's nose where it had once broken. Hari pulled away, but Moonlit followed. "Not so desperately easy, of course. Yet we are even more afraid of death than your kind. What is wrong with your nose?"

"It broke," Hari said curtly.

"So fragile," Moonlit said and traced Hari's jaw with his other hand. "It is a wonder God bothered to make humans at all if he could not bother to do it better."

Hari couldn't help the warmth pooling his gut at the touch. He couldn't help noticing everything perfect in Moonlit's body. "Don't touch me," Hari said, wanting the opposite but unable to ask.

"I cannot harm you while I owe you," Moonlit said, brushing against a curl of black hair. "Not even if you beg me while starving to death. You look so much different than the last human I knew."

Moonlit dragged a soft thumb against Hari's chapped lower lip. Hari swung out of his reach and said, "Don't touch me!" He stood and dropped back down a few steps away.

"Save yourself," Moonlit said.

Hari laughed and pressed his face into his knees.

\---

The sun fell and the cavern chilled quickly. Hari twitched as his breath became visible and soon after he broke into trembles. His clothing was thin and light, suited only to blocking out the desert sun. The jinn was right. He'd die before sunrise at this rate.

He felt less brave than before, when he'd been full of water and comfortable. Now his stomach ached, and he felt the immediacy of his death touching him. He only had a few more hours. For anything.

"Wish yourself free," the jinn said from his spot beneath the moonlight. He looked like a silver statue beneath the cold glow, eyes pale as his namesake.

Hari shook his head. He thanked God he was too cold to cry, because he knew he would be otherwise. He did not want to die. He shook his head again and again. His teeth clacked, his muscles cramped with their tight shivering, and he felt like his entire world was collapsing in on itself, but beyond him, Moonlit stood as still and untouched by human hands as the moon in the sky.

Moonlit walked to Hari and sat beside him. Heat wafted from his skin, and Hari wanted to scream, but hot arms suddenly wrapped around and pulled him onto Moonlit's lap. Hari did not complain. He only buried his face into Moonlit's neck and molded himself as best he could.

"Do not fall asleep," Moonlit said, and as he said it, Hari realized it was all he wanted. "Do not die." Hari couldn't pry his jaw open, so he said nothing.

Every so often, Moonlit would jostle Hari, who only groaned.

"You are stupid," Moonlit said at some point. Hari felt it must have been many days later, though the night had not yet passed. Through a haze of clove and heat, Hari dreamed he felt burning fingers along his scalp. "But you are brave."

\---

Hari jolted awake, feeling cold and exposed. He clutched about himself before remembering where he was. Early morning light filled the cavern, making it beautiful despite Hari's growing hatred of it.

The jinn was no where to be seen.

Hari stood and stretched. He wandered into the darker cavern to relieve himself before returning to find Moonlit with the gold pot full of water. "Drink," he said, pushing it against Hari's lips.

"I can hold it myself," Hari whispered, remembering the trouble he had with it yesterday. Had it only been yesterday?

"Save your strength," Moonlit said, and tilted it for Hari. "You will not die now by thirst or cold, but by starvation. Do not hasten it."

Water sloshed his chin and neck as Hari pulled away. He looked at the ground and said, "Thank you. For keeping me from dying, Master Moonlit."

Moonlit leaned close, so close Hari's breath caught and heart jumped. He gripped Moonlit's shoulders tightly when he felt a scorching tongue at his neck, following the trail of water.

"A vessel that has held a jinn will purify any liquid put into it," Moonlit said after pulling back. Hari let his hands fall, clenching, to his side. "Don't waste it," Moonlit added, but the glitter in his eyes made Hari dizzy and his stomach drop out. The world spun. Hari tilted and nearly fell and perhaps the dizziness had more to do with his hunger.

Hari sat, eyes closed, and tried to ignore the pain in his stomach.

"I admire your bravery," Moonlit said, once again beside him. Hari remembered the dream from last night and wondered if it perhaps was not. "But save yourself. I promise I will not harm any humans. I will be careful as one who sweeps before themselves so as to not step on a stray bug."

"Then accept the wish," Hari said, opening his eyes. "I wish you would never harm a human."

"I cannot agree to that."

Hari let his head fall against the stone. "I see."

After a while, he again felt hands on him. Moonlit traced his skin carefully, as if he were made of eggshells, and Hari didn't have the energy to stop him. Heat touched the bones of his wrist, his ankles, the hairs at the base of his neck.

"Before I die," Hari said, surprisingly numb, "why do you keep touching me?"

"Wish for the answer," came Moonlit's terse reply.

\---

Another frigid night passed with Hari curled against Moonlit's body. He slept off and on, hunger pains allowing him no more, and Moonlit himself never seemed to sleep at all.

"Tell me a story," Moonlit said when Hari groaned raggedly. "Distract yourself. Tell me of where you were born."

Hari tried. He told Moonlit of the crowded home he'd grown up in. He told him about his father, a stone mason. He spoke of his mother, with hands dyed red and blue from her weaving. Moonlit laughed at the stories of his eight older siblings. Hari even told him the story of his father's death, how he had been too weak to pull him from the well, and his father had drowned in a desert. Through his pain, he barely understood why Moonlit's skin was wet.

"Tell me about you now," Hari asked later, when the night and pain had both fallen silent.

"Much has happened to me. I have lived too long," Moonlit said, pressing a kiss to Hari's neck.

Hari groaned through another bout of pain and dug his fingers into Moonlit's flesh.

"Wish to save yourself, wish for me to tell you my life's story, and I will give you whatever you want," Moonlit whispered against his ear, a strange hissing panic in it.

But Hari was gone again.

\---

Hari didn't move the third day. Moonlit never strayed far from him, save to fetch more water. Most often Hari resisted the drink.

"How long does it take to die by starvation?" Hari asked at some point, voice dull.

"I don't know for a human. It takes many years for a jinn," Moonlit said, eyes no longer flickering like flame.

"I heard..." Hari's voice dropped off, and Moonlit pressed his fingers to his cheek. Hari opened his eyes. "I heard three weeks. This is only the third day. But. But it's only three days for water. If I had drank nothing..."

Wind blew overhead, and the cave mouth whistled.

Hari smiled. "Don't bring me any more water."

Moonlit pressed their foreheads together. "No. Not unless you wish it."

Hari laughed, but it was weak. His eyes fell shut again.

Moonlit straddled his outstretched legs. He held Hari's face between his large palms. "Hari."

Hari blinked at him. At the look on Moonlit's face, he gave a lopsided smile. He leaned forward and pressed his mouth to Moonlit's. Only a clumsy touch before he fell back again. “Don't look like that, Master Moonlit.”

Moonlit did not move. "Hari," he said again. His perfect face finally twisted into something ugly and broken, and he took a ragged breath, "Wish for me to never harm a human." He pressed his eyes tight, shaking with the knowledge of what he'd agreed to. Of what he'd damned himself to. But Moonlit was willing. A cold hand touched his jaw.

"I wish you'd kiss me."

Moonlit opened his eyes to see Hari smiling, cheeks wet.

Moonlit kissed him, soft and careful, and Hari melted into him. But Moonlit pulled away quickly and Hari gave a shuddering inhale. "Your wish is granted," Moonlit said, eyes flaring like embers in the wind. Arms tightened around Hari, and he clung with a squeak as the ground fell away beneath his feet.

And then sunlight filled Hari's vision. His eyes burned, but Hari refused to shut them on the desert spreading below and the vast, vast sky.

"I will see you fed, Hari, and then rested," Moonlit said, voice thrumming like a struck cord. Hari stared at Moonlit, fire flickering in every inch of him. "And then you will have to wish for me to stop kissing you."

Hari inhaled a lungful of desert wind and clove and said, "I'll never wish that."

 

**Author's Note:**

> My beta gave the extremely helpful note of "They're gonna frick frack I can sense it." Thanks, beta, super helpful! But really, she did help my original, clunky beginning while keeping me from cutting out the entire thing. So thanks, Beta!


End file.
